JETPACK22--GENESEE 05/22/07--- Eric Scott flies off the deck of the famous sleeper house Tuesday in Genesee. Using his Go Fast Jet Pack he pulled off the stunt for Warren Miller Entertainment's next film. RJ Sangosti/ The Denver Post

Eric Scott talks fast and intelligently. He doesn’t sound like a crazy person.

He has a normal haircut. He wears blue jeans and T-shirts and ball caps. He doesn’t look like a crazy person, although the hollow-cheeked 44-year-old guy does resemble Iggy Pop just a bit.

But the guy has strapped jet packs to his back more than 600 times and shot himself hundreds of feet into the air. He’s traveled faster than 70 miles per hour, propelled by a jet pack.

Watch him lift off from the roof of a Vegas casino, buzz out over the edge and hover way, way, way above the ground, and you might find yourself hyperventilating. And thinking: Eric Scott is a crazy person.

So let’s just say it. All together now: Eric Scott is a crazy person.

But let us also stipulate: Eric Scott is not crazy-scary, like the edgy drifter guy shouting and gesticulating in the 7-Eleven. He’s just good ol’ crazy-daring, adrenaline-junkie crazy, possessed by the same sort of insanity that inspires people to ski off cliffs or surf 60-foot waves.

“I couldn’t think of a luckier job,” says Scott one afternoon in the offices of Go Fast Sports and Beverage, the Denver energy-drink and apparel company that pays Scott to travel around the world with his jet pack. “It’s very dangerous, but it’s great to talk to the kids and stuff.”

If only the kids – we can just call them boys – could experience the Go Fast Sports office, also known as Boy Valhalla. A smashed motorcycle on display. Helmets and motorcycle boots scattered around. Big, custom rollerblades designed, in combination with a motor, to break some sort of land-speed record. Go Fast energy drinks spilling out from everywhere. A “human catapult” that tosses parachute-wearing people 300 feet – and higher – into the sky. A 135-pound jet pack hanging from a steel beam in a garage.

It’s all the work of Troy Widgery, the Denver native who started Go Fast Sports in 1996, a few years after he survived a plane crash in which 16 others died.

He started with T-shirts, then other types of apparel, before turning to energy drinks. He calls his business a “lifestyle company,” and it revolves around speed and derring-do.

Ever since Widgery was a kid, he dreamed of owning the kind of jet pack James Bond flew in the movie “Thunderball.”

So he started building one similar to a pack developed by Bell Laboratories in the 1960s, of which there are only about a dozen, and far fewer people who know how to fly them.

Scott was a stuntman in Hollywood for about a decade, working on the television show “Walker, Texas Ranger” – and “getting my butt kicked by Chuck (Norris) every day,” says Scott – when he heard about a local guy with a jet pack.

Scott tracked him down, trained as a jet pack pilot, crashed badly once, destroying a shoulder and knee, but has been flying jet packs as much as possible ever since.

About two years ago, Scott heard Widgery was improving on the old pack, so he called and asked if he could fly for Go Fast Sports.

Widgery agreed, and now flying the jet pack is all Scott does. No net. No parachute.

A few days after the interview, he was headed to Chicago to pilot the jet pack for an event. Then to Rotterdam, Netherlands, for another event. Then Brazil. And so on.

The point? For Widgery, it’s all promotional. Wherever Scott flies, he’s advertising the heck out of Go Fast.

But soon, Widgery says, the jet pack may turn into a business. He’s developing a new jet pack, based on turbines, that will let pilots fly for more than 20 minutes. He’s hoping to have it ready by December.

Existing packs work for a little more than 30 seconds, so the idea of flying around for 20 minutes thrills Scott.

“It’s amazing,” he says of flying. “The feeling of flight is really hard to explain. To defy gravity. It’s like jumping off the ground and not having to come down right away.”

Scott, who grew up in Helena, Mont., always has pushed things. He rode dirt bikes as a kid, joined the Special Forces as an adult, where he spent a lot of his time parachuting.

He’s picky, though, about how he gets his kicks.

“Bungee jumping doesn’t appeal to me,” he says. “I’m not that fond of rubber bands.”

Craziest thing he’s ever done

What’s your favorite movie? “The Rocketeer”

Favorite book? “Way of the Peaceful Warrior”

Your favorite place in Colorado? Estes Park. It reminds me of Switzerland.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done, other than jetpacking? Getting hit by a car, intentionally. Or doing a full burn, a 30-second full burn with my whole body on fire. You’re painted in rubber cement and they light you on fire. (Both were stunts he did for “Walker, Texas Ranger.”)

What kind of car do you drive? A 1961 flat-nose Econoline van. A Scooby van.

Where is your favorite place to vacation? Brazil. Rio. The people are wonderful, and the women are superfine.

Wow!

The pack generates 800 horsepower

It reaches 150 decibels

It goes through 5.5 gallons of fuel in 33 seconds. It shoots out superheated steam.

While network affiliates battle for precious slivers of attention and advertising dollars, digital distractions multiply, which has led to an overall decline in local TV-news viewership, according to a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center.